


yet, never, in extremity, it asked a crumb of me

by olivcrqueenx



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Character Study-ish, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Time travel Mention, alt s5 ending, canon divergent from 5x18, coie mention, no betas we die like all hopes for this show, season 5, slow burn so slow it's essentially just a lit match twenty feet under a pot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:29:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24145153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivcrqueenx/pseuds/olivcrqueenx
Summary: she read a poem about hope once, a poem that said hope was a feathered thing -kara doesn't have feathers, or wings, but she can fly.that has to count for something, right?or, the one in which kara spends a lot of time thinking, loses hope, gets it back and gets saved by lena - but not necessarily in that order.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 10
Kudos: 146





	yet, never, in extremity, it asked a crumb of me

**Author's Note:**

> this purely self-indulgent fic was written in a caffeine-induced haze at 4 am when i was supposed to be writing my biochem paper. anyway hope u like, if u hate it dw me too.  
> pls don't @ me for plot inconsistencies i've only seen like ten minutes of the last seven episodes
> 
> title from hope by emily dickinson
> 
> edit: updated a little bit, in the sense that I read it again this year after a lovely comment, and i realized i wanted to add a few lines here and there and clear up some grammar. thank you for reading <3

Kara Danvers has a precarious relationship with hope.   
She shouldn't. She shouldn't, not when it's approximately one-third of her identity, right along with _help_ and _compassion for all_. Not when it's the part of her that helped create the new universe, the part she's a paragon of. 

When she sent Mon-El away, and didn't know what happened to him, when she found out Sam was Reign, when the whole world was destroyed around her - it chips away. 

(She read a poem about hope once, a poem that said hope was a feathered winged thing - 

Kara doesn't have feathers or wings, but she can fly. 

That has to count for something, right?) 

All of those things worked out, though. Just the moment she thought she might not believe it anymore, Mon-El ended up alright, Sam got her happy ending, the world sprung into existence once more. 

But this time, she's finding herself in painfully short supply. 

It has a little too much to do with watching her ex best friend, ex almost something, ex maybe, walk away from her desk after an uneasy conversation and a hesitantly gifted book. 

....If Kara were to look back and estimate, she'd say it took almost a year for Lena to get comfortable with sleepovers at her apartment.  
Another six months to fall asleep in her bed, and another three to develop the later recurring habit of falling asleep on Kara's couch after movies and too much food. 

The week before Kara wrote the article that brought Lex down, Lena had fallen asleep on Kara's floor, head resting sideways against the couch. Kara had lifted her up as silently as possible and carried her to the bed, and thought _tomorrow_ , I'll tell her tomorrow.

It all added together. Wanting just one more sleepover. Just one more day being game night partners. One more day being best friends. one more day spent being _the one good thing in my life, Kara Danvers,_ as Lena had confessed with her face scrunched up adorably, wine drunk and half asleep. 

All the days, hours, minutes, added together, and suddenly all meaning nothing. Because by the time she had told Lena, it was too late. 

Kara couldn't have predicted this is how it would turn out.   
Lena working for Lex.   
Kara readying herself mentally for the possibility that she might have to fight her. She doesn't think she could ever fight Lena. 

God. She couldn't have guessed. Lena's heart had always been in the right place, she'd known it as surely as her own, and Kara had never thought she would go so far -

Except.   
Maybe... deep down she'd suspected.   
And maybe not just suspected.   
Maybe known. That Lena would react badly. There's a part of her, deep down, that saw this coming light years away. Knew that one day Lena would know and it would probably all be over, unable to be fixed, no matter how badly she wanted to fix it. Lena would be lost to her darkness, the one she always used to keep at arm's length, and god maybe, maybe at this point, it's just a matter of acceptance.

It's over, it's over, it's over.

Her breathing almost stops altogether anyway, when she hears Lena's heartbeat follow her to the door after Lex's announcement. A sliver of hope, which is tamped down just as soon as she leaves, and Lena doesn't follow, because she's been waiting for so long, and it hurts too much to keep believing it'll all be alright in the end. Lena doesn't call, doesn't reach out again, doesn't say a word, stays working for Lex. 

Kara doesn't know where she can go from here. 

She's too angry, too lost, too bitter and... definitely too hasty with Myriad. And Lena calls her a hypocrite, and it rings in her mind like a bell for days. 

It's so _much_ , it's so _frustrating _-  
The one battle she can't win. The one wall that she can't break with her bare hands.__

____

____

Kara loses herself in her duties, in taking care of Alex, in checking on Eliza, in trying too hard not to think about Jeremiah, in trying far too hard not to think about Lena, and Lex, and Leviathan, the armory of swords hanging right above her head. 

And then Lena is at her door. And the whole time she's talking, Kara is thinking, this can't be true. It has to be a trap.  
Right?

She asks Lena to sit, holding her hands still so Lena won't see them shake, and for a moment, an awkward silence stretches between them. 

'What do you need me for?' As soon as she says it, Kara winces a little at the bitterness that spills in her own words, and sighs, letting her shoulders drop, dropping down into the chair farthest from Lena. 'I mean... what's your plan?'

'Lex is trying to steal from Leviathan.'

'What?' 

'He wants something they have. He's too blinded by his desire for power to see that there's a better way to destroy them.' Lena looks up, her green eyes clear and focused. 'If we work together,' Lena says, 'I can do this before he even notices.'

'I don't know if -'

'- you can trust me. I know.' 

She looks tired more than anything else, Kara notices. A kind of weariness, an exhausted she's never seen her be before.  
Lena brushes her hand against her forehead. 'I'm not asking for your complete faith, or your - friendship. I just need your help.'

It could be a trap. 

Later, recalling the conversation, Kara expects Alex to say it, but Alex just hums and looks thoughtful.  
She expects J'onn to say it, but he doesn't seem particularly surprised, simply admits that he could have guessed this would happen. 

So Kara ends up saying it to herself, over and over. 

She's been trying so damn hard not to get her hopes up about this, not to let it get the better of her - she doesn't need that feeling again, the gaping hole in her gut when Lena walked out of the fortress the first time, the overwhelming anger the second time. 

But she thinks about the look on Lena's face, her eyes, the silent plea. Lena asleep on her floor, Lena at her door.

(She wonders if Kate Kane ever loses courage. If Barry Allen has ever lost love.)

They meet two days later in the basement of CatCo.

'I was sure you thought this would be a trap,' Lena remarks, one raised eyebrow. 

'Still could be.' Kara crosses her arms over her chest and pretends not to notice the way Lena never looks directly at her, or her suit. She doesn't respond, just pulls a briefcase out of the car next to her. 'Everything you need is in here.' She opens it up to reveal a stack of papers.

Kara takes the ones on top. 'Marseilles? France?'

'There's very few people in the world who tangled with Leviathan and lived. It looks like they banded together to keep Leviathan away.'

'And this is one of them? You're sure?'

Lena nods. 

'I guess I'm going to France,' Kara says under her breath, flipping a page to see an exact address. She looks up at Lena, reading a paper of her own. 'What about you?' 

'Closer,' Lena says, and Kara hates that she recognises this Lena voice perfectly, the business voice, perfect monotonous formality, not a sliver of emotion given away. 'Star City.' 

An hour's journey. Kara nods thoughtfully, and sets a time of her own. 'I'll see you here tomorrow.'

She expects Lena to counter, but she doesn't - just nods. She doesn't even look up when Kara flies away. 

Kara taps her earpiece, telling J'onn and Alex to keep an eye out for anything that could to happen behind her back, just in case, and flies towards the Atlantic. 

They meet seven people between them, between awkward secret meetings and travelling in opposite directions. And everyone they talk to points them to the same person, a woman. Except she's been missing for five years, and there's barely a trace of her left. Until Lena hacks into the NSA, and finds a forwarding address for the woman, belonging to an old man living right there in national city. 

Supergirl floats above Lena's balcony, not daring to land. 'Do you - do you want to go see him, or should I?'

Lena's voice wavers. 'We... can also both go?'

'Yeah. Yeah, okay. We can both go.' 

Kara turns to leave, but she can't help it. She has to ask the question that's been bouncing in her mind for days.

'Why are you doing this?'

'What?'

'I know. You said you realised you were wrong, I just... why?' 

_What made you realize,_ she wants to ask, _what is it that made you change your mind after all this time? Why did it take so long?_

'I don't -' she folds her arms and looks away. 'I don't want to be Lex. i don't.... to... make the world less safe... with me in it.'

If Kara didn't already believe her, she probably would have started to right then. It sounded like Lena was echoing something, repeating something old to herself, but Kara doesn't know what. All she knows is that she'll never really understand Lena's relationship with Lex, the twistedness of it, the love Lena always used to insist was there -   
and maybe it doesn't matter that it took her so long to get here. Maybe what matters is that she got here in the end.

They end up just outside the city the next morning at the door of a tiny suburban looking house, and Kara has flashbacks to nearly a year ago, a different mission, a different truce. 

The old man that opens the door is an old mechanical engineer, and he recognises Lena instantly. He's the most welcoming out of all the people Kara's talked to, not hesitating at all to answer their questions about his daughter.

He takes them up to his daughter's old bedroom, talking away a mile a minute.

'I know i have something here that could help you,' he pushes his walker slowly into the next room, and Lena follows. 

Kara stays where she is in the bedroom, looking through the books instead. The books don't yield much - just terrible taste in mystery novels - so Kara tunes in to the conversation two rooms down, leaving the shelves.

She hears the old man sigh as if finishing a story. 

'Well,' he says, 'you're a young woman, I'm sure you know. How it is with love.'

'....I don't think I do, actually.'

The old man doesn't seem convinced. 'Ah. So it seems.'

Kara stops listening and walks back to the bookshelf. 

Lena and the old man return a minute later, some large folded and faded blueprints in Lena's hands. 

'what is it?'

Lena nods, indicating she's found what they were looking for, and then holds up the bottom blueprint. Kara catches a glimpse of intrigue, excitement, interest in her eyes, a look she hasn't seen in a long time. 

'Check this out, ' she says, 'this looks like she wanted to build a time machine.'

The old man scoffs. 'Well, really. Time machine my ass,' he turns his chair around, and rolls out of the room, 'it isn't possible!'

Kara waits until he's halfway down the hall, and then says it. 'It's possible.'

Lena doesn't look up at first, thoroughly engrossed in the blueprint, 'Well, of course, Lex told me about something called the Waverider, and with this design it -' 

She looks up abruptly. 'Wait,' she says, 'you've time travelled?'

And she sees the silent question there. The look on Lena's face is painfully reminiscent of the look on her own when Mxyzptlk showed up at her apartment all those months ago. She opens her mouth to respond, but the old man wheels back in, offering them tea, and the moment breaks.

They take a National City bus back, to throw off anyone who might see them. 

'I did it,' Kara blurts out, after fifteen minutes of riding in silence. 'Time travelled. To see if I could... change things. Sort of. More like a test run -'

'You.... did?' 

'I... told you who I was when I did my third article on L-corp.'

'Oh. ...what happened?'

Kara looks pointedly out of the window. '....Everybody died.'

'Hm.' A moment of silence, and then, 'you... said _times_?' 

Kara ends up spilling the rest. The different ways it didn't work out. The one where Lena died. The one where Kara died.   
But she keeps the one they never met in to herself. That Lena - the one with the cold fury, quiet madness and Kryptonite in her chest - haunted her enough as it was. 

Lena doesn't say much. Doesn't say anything at all really, just listens and looks like she's thinking, brows furrowed, eyes averted. 

Kara doesn't push her to respond. 'So you know. It.... it was always going to end badly,' she says it with a sense of finality, but her certainty falters a little at the look on Lena's face.

There's another awkward silence, because they have an abundance of that these days, and Kara thinks this distance hurt less when she wasn't seeing Lena regularly. 

She still remembers it all in perfect clarity - the late lunches, the coffee dates, the post-interview conversations on the couch in Lena's office, the last three years. Once upon a time, they never ran out of words, never ran out of things to talk about, to discuss, to tell each other.  
It was probably the worst part of losing Lena, the fact that she couldn't do that anymore. Couldn't spill what was on her mind. Couldn't say anything at all. 

The bus stops in front of Luthor Corp, and Lena gets to her feet. She looks at Kara for a brief second as if to say something, say _goodbye,_ or _see you later_ , but sighs instead. 

'I'm not going to lie,' she confesses, 'if this is the best outcome, I'm,' she laughs, a short bitter laugh, 'I'm not too happy with it.'

Her eyes meet Kara's, and Kara sighs. 'Neither am i.'

It's the closest to a confession, a reconciliation, to solid ground that they've gotten in months. it's the first time in a long time Kara has let herself say it out loud, let herself express that pain. The aching sting of knowing she & Lena were multiversally meant to be a mess of bad endings and bitter secrets. 

For a minute, it looks like Lena might say something else, but she doesn't. She just smiles a small smile, and gets off. 

They're standing in the DEO, two days later, when it all finally comes to fruition.  
Kara sighs deeply and chuckles, realising they've got leviathan beat, and she turns an excited smile to Lena behind her, looking just as relieved, just as vindicated. 

'You did it, Supergirl,' Lena offers her hand to shake, and Kara hears her heart race. She corrects her, taking the outstretched hand. 'We did it.'

They celebrate a little too soon. Kara and Lena are putting the final phase of the plan in motion, in Leviathan's hideout, almost, almost done, when -

A figure smashes through the roof.  
Lex cracks the concrete with his landing.  
Kara feels the kryptonite before she sees it.

'Well, well. Two birds with one stone,' Lex speaks directly to Lena, frozen in front of him. 'You really thought I would just let you get away with this? I always knew you would chose her - you were always going to fall to the other side. This time it's going to be permanent.'

The gun is a massive thing, bright with green light, and Lex lifts the Lexosuit arm, and Kara knows what he's going to do. she stumbles to one knee, the pain from the Kryptonite overwhelming.

'It's a shame,' Lex says, 'that my little sister went rogue and decided to kill Supergirl. A lovers' quarrel, would you say?'   
He cocks the gun, and his smile is malicious satisfaction, eyes alight with a morbid excitement.   
'I've been waiting to pay the favor back for a long time.'

Two things happen at once.   
The weapon backfires, and Lex flies back with the force of the Kryptonite pieces that hit him.  
And.  
Kara feels soft hands and waves of dark hair blur in the corner of her vision - the weight of being shielded. She's too weak to push her away - she tries to move, to save them both, but it's too late.   
The blast hits Lena instead.  
She falls to the ground just beside Kara.  
The pain of the proximity is unbearable. Kara stumbles back, her head pounding as the green scrapes through her skin, as she sees the bullets light up Lena's body with an unearthly green glow, crude stars against the black of her clothes.

Lena laughs, a short, bitter thing against the darkness.  
'Well,' she mutters looking up at the roof, her voice low, 'at least no one will suspect me of trying to murder Supergirl now.'

'He -' Kara tries to wrap her head around it, around the haul of Kryptonite that hit both of them, but not her.   
'He left his weapons designs out,' Lena says weakly, 'I wanted it to backfire. Didn't,' she coughs, 'didn't think it would be... like this.' 

Kara tries to get closer to her. Blood begins to pool behind Lena's head, around her ponytail, a halo of terrifyingly dark red, almost black. She's still trying, still trying to get to her, but she's dropped to her knees and hands on the ground. She reaches out, catching Lena's hand, even as the Kryptonite runs through her skin in streams of pure pain. It feels like she's dying - but Lena's going to be one dying if she doesn't get her to safety, she needs to get to her -

Lena's head drops to the side and she looks at Kara with sad eyes and bloodstained lips. 'Kara?'

'I'm here, Lena, I'll get you -'

Lena hums like she's barely heard. 'Kara, if... if you time travel to try and fix this, do me a favor.' She sighs, a soft exhale followed by a shuddering gasp. 'Don't - never - never tell me.'

'Never tell you?'

'The truth... make sure I never find out. I wish I didn't know. Wish...' her eyelids flutter, 'it wasn't true.'

Pain flares up in her chest, and Kara doesn't know whether it's the Kryptonite or not. 

'You... wish I wasn't Supergirl?' 

Lena shakes her head slightly, the barest movement. 'No, I - I... wish it wasn't true that -' she takes another deep gasp for air, and Kara tries to focus on anything other than the blood pooling below her. '....Wish it wasn't true that I never... really... knew you.'

'You know me,' Kara says, and her voice is loud and desperate, 'you do know me.' 

'No...' Lena's eyes start to close, every slow blink a stab into Kara's heart. 'I don't.'

........  
..................  
........

_I don't._

Kara's lying under the sun lamps, eyes closed against the warmth of the light. There's a buzz of conversation and computers around the building.   
She focuses her super hearing to make sure her powers are alright again. To try and take her mind off of things. 

(Seeing Lena's eyes close, feeling her hand go limp, hearing her heartbeat falter.   
Alex, J'onn and Brainy bursting into the warehouse with an army of armored agents behind them, Alex, panicked, saying _did she hurt you?_   
Watching Lena lying in a white bed, still glowing Kryptonite green, unable to go to her.)

Kara focuses on the first floor, Brainy talking authoritatively to a whole team of agents, one of whom is incredibly nervous, heart racing, and she wonders why.   
She listens to the basement, where - oh, ew, two agents in the closet, really? Alex is walking down that hallway, completely unaware, headed here probably.   
She listens to the second floor, and stiffens. Lena's heartbeat is stronger, picking up in pace. she's waking up. 

Kara swings her legs over the side and walks out of the room, waving away the DEO agent who tries to stop her.

_You do know me.  
I don't. _

It's been playing on loop in her head. Lena's last words.  
_I don't I don't I don't._

Kara catches sight of a single ray of red in the sunset, just visible from the balcony she always enters from.   
It reminds her of Krypton, this kind of sunset. Always and without fail. 

She wants to go to Argo city, she realises. She wants to see her mom, to just get away for a little bit, far away from mysterious organisations and evil bosses and super villains trying to frame her ex best friend for her murder. 

Most of all, she thinks, listening to a single heartbeat in the building, she wants so badly for Lena to understand. And she thinks she finally knows that it can happen. 

_I don't._

Lena knew her takeout orders, her office politics, her stories of Midvale, her horrible habits, her top ten favourite musicals in order - but she never knew about Krypton. Its language, still a comfort to Kara's tongue, its life, still a constant in her head, its legacy. The weight of two worlds on her shoulders, the dead and the living. Her alienness.   
Lena knows half of her. All Kara can think about is how badly she wants her to know the rest.

She walks into the room to see Lena awake, drinking water with the help of the agent nearby. Kara waves the agent away, and takes the glass herself. 

'Hi,' Lena says, and it comes out a rough croak. She coughs, and Kara brings the glass of water back to her lips. 

'How are you feeling?'

'Okay,' her voice clears after a moment, 'you?' 

'You shouldn't have done that,' Kara says, and just like a while ago, it's just a note too cold, too bitter. She softens her voice a little, trying not to let the panic and fear she'd been feeling show. 'You could have died.' Lena moves to say something, but kara exhales slowly. 'But... you saved me. thank you.'

'The world needs Supergirl,' she says, matter-of-factly. Kara doesn't miss her attempt to brush it all away, to diminish the magnitude of what she did, choosing Kara's life over her own. What hits Kara the most is that it didn't even seem like a choice. The gun had lit up. Lena had covered her instinctively. Like _she_ was Supergirl - bulletproof - and Kara needed protecting. It had so often been the other way around.  
'Besides,' Lena continues, 'Kryptonite bullets are just bullets for a human. You would have been hurt worse.'

Kara nods absently, and sits down in the chair next to her bed. 'Just -,' she murmurs, straightening Lena's blanket with one hand, 'don't ever do anything like that again.' 

If she'd watched Lena die there - with Kara unable to save her, just when things were starting to be okay, just when she thought they would be okay -   
She can't bring herself to think about it. 

...And there's one thing taking up all the space in her brain, anyway. 

'What you said, in there...before you passed out...'

Lena sighs deeply, and puts her head back against her pillow, her dark hair a streak across the white. 'It's true, Kara. I... don't know you. I never really did.'

'...I never really let you.'

Lena nods, her expression painfully sad. The machine beeps between them. The silence isn't awkward this time, she realises. It's... just there. Just silence. Kara looks away again. 'Go somewhere with me,' she says softly. 

Lena frowns. 'Go somewhere?'

'Yes.' Kara lifts her head. 'Will you go somewhere with me?'

'Where?'

'The last surviving part of Krypton.' 

'...the Fortress of Solitude?'

Two weeks ago, two months ago, Kara would never have said this.   
But two months ago Kara didn't know what she knows now. 

'No. Argo City.' 

Lena's eyes widen in surprise. 'Are... you sure?'

'If you want to.' _If you want to try,_ Kara doesn't say, _if you want to know me._

She walked up here scared that the answer could be no, but Lena's eyes are a mirror, reflecting Kara's wanting to try again. And she knows she doesn't have anything to be worried about. 

Three weeks later, she holds Lena by her arms, Lena's feet over hers, flying up into the sky - and they're barely past cloud cover when Lena says, 'wait.'

Kara stops. 'Are you okay?' She holds Lena carefully, thinking about her injuries, almost healed but not completely.

'Good, just - can we stop here?' Lena tips her head towards the sun sinking out of sight.  
'Just... for a moment.'

Kara looks to the side, to the last, warm rays of light shining on them. She looks back to Lena, head turned towards the light, eyes closed, and she can't help it. She stares. Lena turns her head and catches her looking. 'What?'

'I'm sorry,' she says, and she knows she's said it before, but she needs to say it again, get it off her chest just once, hoping Lena feels it this time. 'I'm sorry for breaking your heart.'

Lena's hand comes up to her shoulder, squeezing it softly. 'I'm sorry for breaking yours.' And then, so quiet, Kara wouldn't have heard without super hearing, 'I'll never make that mistake again.'

Kara smiles at her, a small hopeful smile. 

'Neither will I.'

The sun's almost completely gone, but the light in Lena's smile back is comparable. She shivers a bit. 

'Oh,' Kara rubs her arm, 'you're probably freezing.' She lifts her cape, wrapping it around them both. Lena leans forward, and Kara's heart almost stops in her chest. But Lena just hugs her, and Kara exhales like she's been holding her breath for ages. She might have been, too. She might've been.

She drops her head into Lena's shoulder and sighs. She's the one flying, but Lena holds her up - and, for the first time in a long time, Kara lets herself hope.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me @olivcrqueenx on tumblr


End file.
